


Languages of Love

by bearonthecouch



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: A Wedding and a Funeral (not at the same time), Angst, Dating, Family, Fatherhood, First Love, Long-Distance Relationship, Maes Hughes Character Study, Military Family, Multi, some internalized homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-14
Updated: 2018-09-14
Packaged: 2019-07-12 01:11:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15984404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bearonthecouch/pseuds/bearonthecouch
Summary: And the thing about Maes is, he was never really with her. Never all the way.





	Languages of Love

Gracia watches as Maes Hughes laughs and teases the other boy, who has a shy smile and looks Xingese. Maes’s hands never leave the boy’s body; his arm is around his waist, or draped over his shoulders, or he’s ruffling his hair or clapping him on the back. His grin is huge, and his laughter floats above the crowd.

She moves away from the brick wall surrounding the academy’s lawn, and takes a sidelong glance at her parents, who are deep in conversation with Maes Hughes’s parents and don't even seem to notice her. She walks across the lawn toward Maes and his friend. The friend sees her coming, and pushes Maes off of him.

Maes opens his mouth, the half-formed question clearly visible on his face, but the friend nods toward Gracia and Maes finally seems to understand. He smiles again, though he doesn't bother to hide his confusion. “Do I know you?”

She shakes her head. “My parents know your parents. I think our dads were old war buddies or something. Or they work together. Both? I dunno.”

Now, true understanding does dawn, and Gracia doesn't like the look on Maes’s face when it does. He closes off, from her and from the friend both. He wraps his arms tightly around his upper body, and the relaxed laughter she'd seen earlier is nowhere to be found. “Look, no offense…”

“Gracia,” she supplies.

“Gracia. I don't need my old man’s help to find a date.”

The friend looks distinctly uncomfortable, and says something very quietly that might be “Maybe I should go.”

“Don't you dare go anywhere, Mustang.”

So Mustang stays, his dark eyes flitting to Gracia and then back to Maes.

“This is Mustang,” Maes Hughes says. “Roy. My roommate.”

“It's nice to meet you, Roy,” she says. She holds out a hand to him, and he looks confused, but shakes it.

“You too,” he says, smooth and practiced.

Maes rolls his eyes. “Great, now that we’re all acquainted.”

Roy places a gentle hand on Maes’s upper arm. “Be nice to her,” he warns.

“Fuck’s sake, Mustang, I'm nice to everybody. Sorry,” he adds, in her general direction, after belatedly realizing he probably shouldn't be cursing in front of her.

She shrugs. She’s hardly upset by a little bit of foul language.

“I can just… if you're not interested, I’ll-”

She’s already twisting back toward the tree under which her parents and his stand. Maes grabs her arm, and she looks up, startled.

“Don't go,” he says, and he sighs deeply. “Mustang’s right, I'm being an ass. It's not your fault my parents are… my parents.”

Gracia nods, for lack of anything better to say. It's not her fault. And is she agreeing to whatever he thinks about his parents? She doesn't know anything about his parents.

“Why don't we get out of here?” Maes suggests. He too is now monitoring his parents, still in conversation with hers. He seems eager to escape them. Gracia supposes she cannot entirely blame him. What twenty-year-old newly minted soldier wants to hang around with his mom and dad?

“We?” Roy asks, sounding strained.

“It's your graduation, too, Mustang. And besides, you know all the good bars.”

“Is that alright with you?” Roy asks her, while Maes rolls his eyes.

“I suppose so.”

She can think of worse ways to spend a Friday night than with two handsome recent academy graduates.

“Great,” Maes says. “Here,” he says, shoving a camera into her hands. “Take a picture of us.”

She takes the bulky instrument and nods, too startled to do anything but agree.

“Smile,” she orders. Maes grins, but the other boy, Mustang, just looks exasperated. Eventually she stops trying, and just snaps the photo. And _then_ Mustang smiles, a self-satisfied expression on the edge of a smirk. Hughes smacks him, and takes the camera back.

He surprises her by falling into step beside her as Mustang leads the way, past the academy’s iron-wrought gates and into Central’s bustling streets.

“So. Gracia. What've your parents told you about me?”

She shrugs. “Almost nothing.”

“Well, that's a relief. Now I don't have to break your heart when I don't meet your expectations.”

His tone is lighthearted and he's smiling, but Gracia frowns. Maes seems to have relaxed somewhat, but somewhere in his self-deprecation and tension, it's obvious he's hiding from her.

Not that she expects his whole life story within five minutes of meeting him, but… there are layers to him, obviously. And there's something inside her that thinks they might be worth unpacking.

Whatever she's feeling in her belly and brain and maybe even her heart right now, she tells herself it isn't quite attraction. More like curiosity. It's not that Maes Hughes doesn't look good in a uniform, he does, and he walks like he knows it, all confidence and pride, but can she blame him? He's an officer of the Amestrian Military now, and there are a whole lot of perks that go along with that title.

So yeah, it's a little bit attraction. But it isn't that shallow. _She_ isn't that shallow. Right?

She studies Maes and he turns to watch her watching him. “Tell me about you, then,” he says. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-two.”

“Oooh, an older woman,” Mustang teases. Gracia hadn't realized he was listening.

She blushes slightly. “Don't mind him,” Maes says quietly. She nods.

Maes reaches out for her hand, and his fingers are sweaty in the early summer heat, solid and callused. Gracia feels something spark through her at the touch.

“So what do you do for fun, besides letting your parents set you up with younger men?”

His tone is still light and his eyes are still dark. Gracia tries not to be unsettled by the obvious dichotomy.

She shrugs. “I work in a bakery. I know that might not count as fun, but…”

“But if you can offer me free food, that is definitely a point in your favor. Military cuisine leaves a lot to be desired.”

“I'll see what I can do.”

Maes nods, and he squeezes her hand a little and whatever it is that's tightened in her chest eases somewhat. He's a perfect gentleman, really. So what if he doesn't get along with his father?

He slips his hand out of hers, to push open the door to the bar that Roy Mustang has already entered. The room is dimly lit and smoky in the way that most bars are, and there is hum of conversation. No radio.

The three of them pile into a booth seat, and Gracia laughs as Maes tells stories that Mustang confirms with short nods and wide eyes, like he can't quite believe they actually happened to him.

They're three or four beers in when Roy starts making half-assed excuses to leave. He holds Maes’s gaze, almost as if he's waiting for permission.

“Yeah, yeah. Get out of here, Mustang. Tell your aunt I say hey.”

Roy grins at that, and shakes his head as he walks away.

And then Gracia is alone and slightly buzzed with Maes Hughes.

They stay there all night, talking until last call and then past-last call, when the bearded man behind the bar kicks them into the street.

Maes stands there under the bright streetlight and offers to walk her home. When she says she lives too far away, he calls her a cab instead.

She knows where his parents live, or thinks she does, and he can't walk there from here either, but he says he'll be fine and something in her knows better than to push it.

She smiles at him as she climbs into the back of the car; he's holding the door open. She says “Congratulations, again.” and he nods. He doesn't say “I'll call you.”

But he watches the cab drive away and Gracia, half-asleep in the early morning darkness, is able to tell her parents honestly, when they ask, that she had a good time with Maes Hughes.

* * *

He never cheats on her, because they are never an exclusive couple. They go on dates - good dates - for the whole summer after his graduation, after Mustang disappears and Maes settles into his new job at Central Command. She knows very little about what he does. So much of it is classified, and even if it wasn’t, he never lets the conversation linger on military matters for long.

He takes her to concerts and to picnics in the park and yes, out drinking. Sometimes he even surprises her by springing for a nice restaurant. He’s gentle and sweet, and he always seems to know exactly what to say. He charms her mother effortlessly when she brings him home. He offers Gracia flowers, and he whistles along to the radio, and he sometimes drapes his arm around her shoulders or lays with her on a blanket under the stars.

She is slowly but surely falling in love with him, and she knows it.

His kisses are soft and sure just like every other part of him.

He holds his breath as her hands explore his body. It’s his birthday, a hellishly hot summer day when they strip down to skivvies, and then nothing at all, to swim in the creek that winds through his grandfather’s property.

They have sex for the first time in the barn loft, and her skin itches from the hay and she’s covered in insect bites, and Maes always laughs when recalling the story. “I thought it would be romantic,” he says, by way of apology. He really does seem sorry. She always forgives him.

After that, their lovemaking is always indoors, or at the very least in the back of a car.

Gracia always initiates. Because Maes is a gentleman, and she would never call him shy, but he seems to be when it comes to having sex with her. He's always a little hesitant, a little awkward. But he knows what he's doing once they get started, and she always winds up resting happily in his arms.

Tonight, they're in her bed, the second or third time he's come over to her place. He's thrilled having a place to go that isn't his parents’ house (which, as far as she knows, he has never returned to since graduating) or the military dorms.

The October sun glows golden through the window.

“I read about your friend,” she says. “He had an interview in the paper. Youngest State Alchemist in history. That makes him famous, doesn't it?”

Maes frowns, and shifts up onto his elbows. “Mustang?” he asks, although obviously. “I didn't think you’d… notice him.”

“I notice things that are important to you.”

There's no escaping the tension in Maes. His entire body is held tight. He shakes his head. “Gracia…”

“Shh,” she says softly. She puts her hand on his shoulder and starts kneading into his stiff muscle with her thumb, but he pulls away, and she doesn't chase him. “Don't apologize, Maes. But don't lie.”

“I'm not-” he starts, but he doesn't know which way he wants to go with that sentence. The lie that would spare her feelings or the truth that she doesn't deserve.

“You love him,” she says, supplying the words he can't admit to.

God, what the hell is wrong with him, why can't he just leave well enough alone and accept this woman who is so much fucking more than he deserves?

“I like you,” he says slowly. For fuck’s sake, he's lying half-naked in her bed. He reaches out for her, his fingers grasping for her hand. Eventually, he ends up pressing his palm against her leg. He can feel the goosebumps on her skin. Her eyes bore into his. “I do,” he insists. “You're kind and sweet and funny and _real_ , and _everybody_ loves you. I'm serious, your parents and my parents and random old people and kids…”

“You like me,” she repeats, and _even now_ , she’s still gentle and kind and calm. “You like me, but you love him.”

“It isn't like that.”

“Explain it to me then, Maes. What is it like?”

“He's my best friend.”

“Your best friend who you have sex with.”

“ _Had_ sex with. I haven't even seen him since graduation.”

He keeps waiting for her to kick him out of her bed, out of her house, out of her life.

But she just sits up, takes his hand in hers, and kisses him, long and slow until he’s holding his breath under the soft force of it. When she breaks away, she holds his gaze with startling green eyes. “Maes, I love you,” she says simply. “I just want you to be happy.”

“I'm happy with you,” he finally says. And he isn't lying. He loves a lot of things about her, and genuinely looks forward to the time they spend together, and if it isn't the desperate hunger he feels for Mustang or even the nervous butterflies he’d felt for the couple of boys who’d come before, who’s to say it isn't just a different kind of love? He could be happy with Gracia. What other choice does he have?

Gracia studies him for what feels like years. And then she nods.

* * *

He surprises her at the bakery on his lunch breaks, sometimes, jumping up onto the counter and swinging his legs back and forth while he munches on whatever pastry or cookie or slice of cake she’s found for him. He looks almost childish then, in a way that takes her breath away, despite the fact that he’s still dressed in military blue and carrying knives and gun both.

He’s slightly freer with his affection, kisses at least. Hugs and casual touches and, obviously, sex, don’t flow from him to her. She always has to coax it out of him, just enough to keep their relationship from starving.

But he’s almost always smiling when he’s with her, and he jokes, and helps around her house, and he comes over more and more frequently until Gracia’s about to just ask him straight up if he wants to move in.

And then he gets the orders that send him to Ishval.

“I thought you said Intelligence doesn’t leave Central,” she chokes out, as he sits at her kitchen table staring down at the typewritten form letter. It’s the most afraid she’s ever been. But she knew what she was getting into, dating a soldier. Didn’t she?

“I thought they didn’t. They’re desperate out there, sounds like. They need people with… specialized skill sets.” Because the grunts are getting slaughtered. Because the Ishvalans are targeting officers specifically, trying to scramble the chain of command. Because this war has been raging for six years already and it is the closest Amestris has ever come to _losing_. Without intelligence, they’re crippled. And he knew what he signed on for.

Gracia clings to him and plants kisses on the back of his neck and doesn’t let him go that whole last night. She drives him to the train station and he almost has to shake her off when they make the last call for boarding. She makes him swear that he’ll come home. He thinks _I can’t make that promise_ , but nods anyway. And he tells himself it’s just another story that he can make come true with enough repetition: He loves her, and he’ll come home.

* * *

Gracia’s honestly a little surprised to get a letter from Maes a few months later. She’s even more surprised when there’s a second one. But she writes back, and as time slides on, their words strip away every illusion they carefully maintained in Central. He doesn’t pretend to be happy. She doesn’t pretend not to miss him.

His descriptions of the war zone are real and raw. His letters churn with fear and guilt, for things that are his fault, and things that aren’t. From reading his neat handwriting, she finds out about ambushes and improvised explosives, baking heat and frigid nights, water rationing, and sleepless nights, and above and through it all, a heartsick loneliness. There is blood on his hands, and he is afraid that he is becoming a monster. Nothing she can say, from far away, feels like anything close to enough. But she keeps writing.

He gets shot at and then _shot_ , a bullet to the gut that very nearly kills him. The battlefield surgeons that save his life are damn good, and he was incredibly lucky. And in the aftermath, he writes _I love you_. They’re both crying, closer in the uncrossable distance of life and death than they had ever been in the safety of home.

His miraculous survival earns him a promotion; the death of his superior earns him another. He talks about being tired, so bone-deep exhausted that he doesn’t even feel afraid anymore, so hollow that the guilt he used to feel is too shallow to fill that hole, it barely touches him. Six months becomes a year.

And then, right around his birthday, he mentions Roy Mustang. Just a name drop, “saw him in camp. He’s… well, nobody’s good here, but he’s _Roy_.”

Gracia and Maes have never been exclusive. And if he can find the comfort he’s needed for almost _a year and half_ , at this point, she’s just glad that someone can give that to him, even if it isn’t her. She tells him to stay alive, to come home. She doesn’t care what happens in between.

The letters slow and almost stop, for a little while. When Maes writes again, even his handwriting is harsh and angry, and shaky. He says “I’m scared. I’m so afraid when we get out of here, there will be nothing left.”

The reports on the radio make it sound like they’re winning.

“I love you,” she writes. “Come home.”

A year and a half becomes two years.

And then, twenty-five months and six days after he left, the Ishvalans officially surrender.

She picks Maes up at the train station once the military finally organizes their force reduction, a few weeks after that. He falls into her arms, lets her hug him tightly, and she’s crying, and he’s just… he’s _hers_ , but he’s jumpy and dazed, and he won’t talk to her, will barely _look_ at her. She doesn’t let go of him, though. And barely three days later, when she says “I wanna get married,” he agrees.

* * *

He goes out the night before, and comes home smelling like soap, hair still wet. He crawls into bed with her and she asks him if he had a good time and he nods and says “yeah.” And then he kisses her, and holds her, and she falls asleep happy, or at least she tells herself she is.

Their ceremony is simple, a city hall thing, because they just can’t wait anymore and they don’t need anything else. Roy Mustang shows up to be their witness/best man, and though Gracia keeps waiting for things to be awkward, surprisingly - or maybe not surprisingly - they aren’t. Or they are, but they are in that same familiar way that they were years ago, when they were all just kids giggling together in a bar, when Maes wouldn’t let himself touch Roy while she was watching, even though he clearly wanted to.

Roy stands witness while Maes and Gracia promise to have and to hold, for better and worse, til death do them part. He watches with a serious expression, but he smiles when Maes smiles.

They can be happy. All three of them can be happy with this arrangement. Right?

* * *

A year later: Mustang transfers to East Command, Maes becomes head of Investigations.

If Gracia thought having a boyfriend in a combat zone was hard, it still couldn’t prepare her for having a husband who works round-the-clock hours in interrogation rooms and active crime scenes. Sometimes, it feels like she goes weeks without seeing him. He falls into bed exhausted and snatches a few hours of sleep, gulps down a cup of coffee, takes whatever food she shoves into his hand, then disappears again. If he gets a day off, it’s worth celebrating, and half the time he uses them to catch up on sleep.

Even when he’s physically present, he’s usually only half there mentally, unable to stop his brain from desperately trying to solve the puzzles that are drawn with blood and bodies.

“Come home,” Gracia whispers, sometimes, when he can’t hear her.

But sometimes, he does. On her birthday, he brings her a bowl of ice cream big enough to swim in, and she licks chocolate sauce and whipped cream off his lips, and then his shirtless chest, and then they’re having sex on the couch like their first summer together, but Maes is actually laughing this time, and when he says “I love you,” she believes him.

He stays home for an entire weekend. It makes the return to harsh reality a bit more bearable. And he brings her little gifts, sometimes, anything from jewelry to decorative trinkets to scarves, whatever he sees that he thinks might make her happy. She knows he loves her, or at least that he’s doing his best, and when he sleeps in his office she tries to believe that it’s not because he’s running away from her.

* * *

“Maes,” Gracia murmurs, late on a chilly night. He’s almost asleep, but he blinks open bleary eyes and rolls over so he can look at her.  
  
“Mmm?”  
  
“I’m pregnant.”

His eyes _fly_ open, and he scrambles to a sitting position. “You’re what now?”

“Pregnant. I’m gonna have a baby. We are. _We’re_ gonna have a baby.”

“A baby,” he repeats, wrapping his mouth around the unfamiliar word. Wrapping his head around the unfamiliar idea. A _baby_. What does he know about fatherhood? He hasn’t spoken to his own father in years. Which is funny, because here he is, giving the man exactly what he’d always wanted.

“Maes?”

He puts on a smile. “This is good,” he insists. “Really good.” He pulls Gracia close and kisses her deeply, and sleeps with her in his arms.

And he dives into fatherhood with the kind of intense fervor Gracia’s never seen. This kind of one-track mind has always been focused outward, away from her: on work and on war. He becomes a fierce protector, determined to do what’s best for her and the baby. He rubs her feet, paints the nursery, puts together a cradle. He basks in the approval she shows when he does these things. He smiles more, although he is still overworked and exhausted, even more so now that he’s determined to create some kind of perfect home for the child that will soon be arriving.

But when Elicia is born, he isn’t there. It isn’t his fault. There’s a serial killer stalking the streets of Central, claiming another victim every few days. While Gracia is in labor, screaming and raging alone with the midwife, Maes is saving some innocent woman’s life. She can hardly blame him for that. But no one can even reach him to tell him that he has a daughter. Gracia’s honestly too exhausted to do more than wonder if he got the message.

He slips into the room the next day as she’s nursing the baby, and he looks at both of them with wonder and awe.

Little Elicia pulls away from Gracia’s breast and blinks up at Maes. “Say hi, Daddy,” Gracia says softly. She puts the baby in his arms, and he almost pulls away, the awe replaced briefly by terror. What does he know about babies? What if he hurts her? But as his daughter - his _daughter_ \- snuggles into his arms, he almost cries. He never knew it was possible to love anyone like he loves this little girl.

* * *

Mustang’s back in town for recertification, with a twelve-year-old kid in tow. “I thought State Alchemists didn't do the apprentice thing.”

“Not an apprentice. Maes, meet Major Elric, Fullmetal Alchemist.”

The kid gives Hughes a look that just dares him to say something about it.

“You're shitting me,” is what Hughes says.

Roy just shrugs.

So of course, Maes invites both of them over to meet his daughter, along with the seven-foot-tall suit of armor that talks with a child’s voice. Gracia takes it all in stride, and Maes loves her all the more because of it. He cradles Elicia in his arms and then tries to get Mustang to hold her, but Roy is adamant about his refusal. In fact, Maes isn’t sure whether Roy or the kid is more uncomfortable around the baby. Edward Elric visibly flinches when Gracia asks him where his parents are. But Maes figures that prodigies don’t generally have idyllic childhoods. Look at Mustang. Yeah, he turned out alright, but who’d have predicted that given his history? Well, Maes would’ve. But he knows Mustang’s aunt/foster mother, and likes her a hell of a lot more than he likes his own parents. And he knows not to judge books by covers. There are plenty of perfectly respectable Amestrian families that fuck up their children more than any orphanage or slum gang could on their worst day. He looks down at Elicia and swears he is not going to fuck up this girl’s childhood, or adulthood. She will not ever have to be afraid of what he’ll think of her. She’ll know that he loves her, without conditions or exceptions. He shifts her in his arms and nods toward Mustang.

“That’s your Uncle Roy,” he whispers. “He loves you too, Elicia, he just doesn’t know it yet.”

Roy rolls his eyes, and Ed seems to be holding his breath. “Can I go?” he asks. He looks at Roy rather than Maes, which is… maybe surprising, but Roy just nods and then the baby Alchemist and the armor make their escape.

“So you’re his… foster father?” Maes asks, once the brothers are gone.

“Commanding officer.”

“You’re commanding pre-teens now?”

“I know it’s not ideal, Maes, but there are extenuating circumstances.”

“I thought the military had a minimum age of enlistment. And it sure as fuck isn’t _twelve_.”

“You’re mad at me.” It isn’t a question. And Roy actually sounds hurt. He always did hate disappointing people.

Maes looks down at his daughter, who whimpers in his arms until he sticks his finger into her tiny mouth. She sucks at it with wide eyes. Maes glances back up at Roy. “You’re the one who calls yourself a dog of the military, Mustang.”

“That wasn’t my phrase.” He sighs, and rubs at his forehead, cringing as he fights flashes of the hell he’s still trying to outrun. When he looks at Maes again, it’s obvious they both know where their heads are at, and it isn’t the safety of Gracia’s living room. “Fuck, Hughes, they won’t send a kid to a combat zone. We aren’t even at war. I’ll babysit him. Maybe he is my apprentice, after all.”

“I guess you know what you’re doing,” Maes says, in a way that implies he guesses nothing of the sort.

“ _Trust me_ ,” Mustang pleads. “You always used to trust me,” he says, so softly it’s barely heard. Maes pulls his finger out of Elicia’s mouth and watches her settle into sleep. He leans back into the couch and stares at Roy and finds that he doesn’t know what to say.

* * *

A couple of days later, Mustang steps into the Investigations office, where Maes is drowning in all the paperwork required for the already-infamous Barry the Chopper’s trial. Maes hasn’t slept for days, he probably looks like a walking disaster. He’s here half-into the night and then awake with tiny Elicia who can _scream_ like no one her size should be able to manage.

And Mustang is capable of being a walking disaster all on his own. Hughes sighs. Roy stands just inside the office door, looking nervous. There’s no one else around, it’s already well past the hour when most sane people go home. “I’m not mad at you,” Hughes announces, as if Roy was a wayward child instead of a twenty-six-year-old adult, who in fact outranks him.

But Roy doesn’t trust himself. He’s always looked to Maes to help him calibrate his moral compass. Maes is probably a shitty calibrator, since his own compass is often determined by what the people around him think. But whatever. They’ve both done plenty of things they aren’t proud of, but they still love each other. Don’t they?

Maes shoves his paperwork to the side of his desk and stands up. He grabs his coat and pushes Mustang out the door, and a cab ride later they’re at Madam Christmas’ bar, which neither of them have seen since the night before Maes’ wedding. But they both need to go back in time a little bit, tonight.

“I don’t know how to do this,” Roy admits, as they sit in their favorite booth, sipping at mugs of dark beer. They sit across from each other and don’t touch, and it feels profoundly _wrong_ to Maes. It must be just as hard on Mustang. “I don’t know how to be here with you and not… I was okay with letting you go, Maes. I was okay with leaving.”

“But I wasn’t. I never wanted to let you go.”

“You got _married_. And… you’re happy with Gracia. Aren’t you?”

“I dunno, Mustang. I mean… yes. Obviously. But I miss you.”

“We can’t…” Roy starts, and he falters right there. Because Maes was always the one who insisted that their relationship had to be hidden like it was something wrong. Roy had never, _ever_ believed that, even a little bit. But Roy wasn’t gunning for Fuhrer when they were kids.

“I’m not talking about sex. Okay, fine, a little bit I miss the sex. But I miss _you_. I miss my best friend.”

“We talk all the time.”

“ _I_ talk all the time. I love your non-verbal… you-ness, but it doesn’t translate well over the phone.”

Roy nods. He drinks his beer and he’s so _tense_ , and Maes always used to know exactly how to make Roy feel better. Roy likes to cuddle. Roy wants to be touched. Roy is going back to East tomorrow, and Maes is going home to his wife and kid… he reaches across the smooth lacquered tabletop and squeezes Roy’s hand. It isn’t enough. It’s the furthest fucking thing from enough, but it’s what they’ve got.

* * *

Elicia’s a daddy’s girl before she’s a year old. She sees far more of Gracia than she does of Maes, but whenever he’s home, she climbs into his lap or sits at his feet or crawls toward him whether he’s on the couch or standing in the kitchen, or laying on the floor with her.

Maes swears her first word is “Dada.” Privately, Gracia thinks it’s just babbling, a repeated syllable with no meaning, but she gives him the win. She loves watching him play with Elicia, anyway. Peek-a-boo, This Little Piggie, teething rings and stacking cups. He still doesn’t talk about work, but there’s so much more to talk about now, to fill the silence: pediatrician’s appointments and Mom & Me groups and everything else that he never gets to see when he’s protecting Amestris.

Gracia and Maes hardly ever have sex anymore. They’re too busy being parents, she’s too busy being a _mother_ , even when he’s home. Maes is always willing to get up in the middle of the night or take the early morning hours when Elicia wakes up crying. He takes her out into the living room and sits with her in a rocking chair and they bond, until Gracia gets up and makes breakfast. Maes goes to work. It’s like they live in separate shifts. They always have, but it took Elicia to make it obvious.

* * *

He’s as good a father as he can be given the circumstances of his work. Gracia has to give him credit. He makes it to every birthday party, calls home to read Elicia a bedtime story over the phone, he pitches in around the house and even drags Mustang over to help with the bigger projects, the two or three times a year that Roy turns up in Central.

Elicia knows “Uncle Roy” and she attaches herself to him because he’s “Daddy’s friend,” made famous by the graduation day photo on the bookshelf and the (child-friendly) stories Maes tells. She’s almost three. When Roy can’t squirm his way out of coming to dinner, she insists on sitting next to him in her booster seat. She keeps “sharing” her vegetables with Roy, and he smiles pleasantly and makes a big show of eating them.

And after the toddler goes to bed, Roy and Maes sit on the couch, each curled toward the empty space between them, whispering about the early rumors of an Alchemist-killer. “It’s not enough to establish a pattern,” Hughes insists.

“How many people have to die to make a _pattern_?”

“More than two.”

“You’re not worried?”

The look Maes gives Roy is clear enough. Yeah, he’s worried, but trying not to be. He insists on walking Roy to the train station the next day, which… he’s never _chaperoned_ Roy anywhere, even when Roy was sixteen. He’s worried. “Take care of yourself, Mustang,” he murmurs, and he pulls Roy into a hug.

Mustang twists out of the gesture of affection, and insists he’ll be fine.

It’s the last time he sees Maes Hughes alive.

* * *

And the thing about Maes is, he was never really with her. Never all the way.

Gracia watches the dirt land hard on the coffin lid while Elicia kicks and screams. She picks up her daughter and tries to soothe her, out of habit, but she can’t pretend this doesn’t hurt. “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” Elicia cries, her small fists raining blow after blow against Gracia’s shoulder.

“Shh, baby,” she murmurs, but Elicia doesn’t stop crying, and Gracia never starts.

She doesn’t cry until Elicia’s safely away with Grammy and Papa, and in the darkness of the empty house, the permanence of Maes’ absence becomes suddenly real. He was never really with her. But he was never really gone. And now he is. He is all the way gone, and Maes halfway-there was a bright enough light for her life to revolve around.

When Roy Mustang turns up on her doorstep the next day, ready-made excuse in hand in an envelope full of military paperwork, she knows he is the only one in the world who understands what she’s lost. “I’m so sorry,” he says, quiet and serious. But it isn’t his fault. It never was.

 


End file.
